Taking a look at a single day’s page of the Libertarian website www.lewrockwell.com, one would think that the world is about to collapse. Indeed it is hard to not be pessimistic when confronted with the following type of line-up:

The bankruptcy of Western nations, particularly the US;

Increasing wars and overseas intervention; the expansion of imperialism;

The lack of integrity of the political class; official lies and corruption.

This is just a selection of the most frequent topics and some days one feels like it is enough to engender complete despair about the future of the world in which we live. Such a feeling would not be unjustified; indeed the website, apparently the best read Libertarian website in the world, is almost unique in drawing attention to these important aspects.

Nevertheless it is vital not to lose optimism in the face of such adversity. And while it may seem that the state is increasing its stranglehold to choking point on the average citizen, there are several key reasons that give cause for optimism.

The first is the increased ability to disseminate information with ease; the growth of the internet left Government control behind and now that it is firmly out of the bag it is unlikely that it will ever be brought under the Government’s heel. Within seconds it is possible to communicate information at very low cost from one side of the world to the other and at the very least for those who want to become educated and to find the true reasons for the way the world turns the ability is that much greater. In some quarters it is true that this aspect does tend to be overplayed. Technological development can also serve opposing ideologies just as it can serve the cause of freedom and there is also the tendency that people will go looking for the answers they want rather than for the truth. Nevertheless this development cannot be overlooked on the road towards liberty.

The second and greater reason, however, is that today we are still enjoying a standard of living that is the fruit of two centuries worth of relative economic freedom. The accumulation of capital that could take place in this epoch is unique in history and whereas pre-Industrial generations could only accept their meagre lot in life as serfs it is difficult to comprehend how this attitude could be repeated today. For today’s average citizen lives far more luxuriantly than did a king of the Middle Ages; not only is our time that of the PC, the iPhone, and communications gadgets but also of such “humbler” luxuries such as cars, refrigerators, supermarkets stacked full of food, clothes shops, and an almost endless array of products that can be bought from some outlet somewhere for relatively a modest price. This standard of living requires the maintenance and growth of its underlying capital structure, a structure that we know, from “Austrian” Economics, can only be produced and nurtured under a condition of free-market capitalism. Indeed so powerful has been this productive tendency of free-market forces that they have even been more than able to mask statist interference. During the 1920s for example productivity was so high that prices still managed to decline in the face of excessive increases of the money supply. And even today the fact that the world still holds together suggests that capitalism and freedom are for the most part still being allowed to work. But more important than that it is very unlikely that a rapid descent of the standard of living could occur without exciting a revolution. When people have become accustomed to living as they do then it would be a “brave” politician indeed who would bring about the destruction of that standard. In the back of their minds I happen to think that this is realised; that they know that freedom is what produces the goods we enjoy today and that, in any case, it is only when free individuals are able to become so productive that the Government has a source of wealth that it can confiscate.

For this reason, therefore, I remain an optimist for the cause of freedom – optimistic that the capitalistic structure of the Western world has not yet totally collapsed and optimistic that, should it come close to doing so, our “leaders” will have the angry masses, pitted and plundered to the hilt, with which to contend.

Against all of the fallacious forms of “under-consumption” theories of boom and bust Say’s law stands as a charming and simple rebuttal. Wrongly and ignorantly described as “supply creates its own demand”, a better and accurate formulation is “goods are paid for with other goods”. In short, while recognising that money is emphatically not neutral and is itself a good, goods are supplied by an individual (demand) in return for money, the latter of which is then used to buy other goods (supply).

This essay will use Say’s Law to illustrate that what is meant by “under-consumption” is, in fact, not a dissatisfaction with consumption (or rather purchasing) per se, but rather that the precise structure of production is not in harmony with the valuations of consumers; the distortion of this structure at the height of the boom proceeding to a bust is only the most extreme of this type of instance.

Say’s Law

While emphasising again that money is not neutral and its status as a good in its own right does have an effect on the structure of production, money does not in and of itself constitute demand. Rather, your demand is the goods that you have to offer for sale in the first place as it is these real goods that sustain the supplier in producing what you buy from him in turn. How productive you are determines the effectiveness of your demand as revealed in the precise exchange ratio – if the goods with which you demand are highly valued they will be able to buy more; if they are valued lower they will buy less. In reality this exchange ratio takes place not directly but through the money mechanism. For example:

1 apple sells for 20p

20p buys 1 orange

The mere possession of money in this scenario does not constitute demand. For in order to gain money to demand oranges a person must first have supplied apples and the amount of money he receives will be determined by his productivity in producing apples – the more productive he is the more money he gets which in turn allows him to demand more oranges. His demand is linked firmly to his original ability to produce and supply apples. It is not therefore that 20p, the money, is the demand for either one apple or one orange. It is, rather, that one apple will demand a supply of one orange1. In other words, the price of a single apple is one orange and the price of a single orange is one apple.

It follows, then, that if changes in the relative valuation occur between goods then this will be reflected in the exchange ratio between these goods. If, for example, oranges decline in value relative to money yet apples maintain their value relative to money a future exchange rate might be as follows:

1 apples sells for 20p

20p buys 2 oranges

In other words, whereas before one apple could buy only one orange, the value of oranges has declined so that now one apple can buy two oranges. Any change in valuation of a commodity therefore necessarily takes effect as a change in the exchange ratio between goods.

Supply, Demand and Prices

In the first place we must be somewhat suspicious of any theory that tells us that there is any under-consumption, i.e. that there is a general glut of everything. For it is suggesting that we suddenly find ourselves in the position of having too much stuff. But this is nonsensical even without any analysis for it implies that humans have suddenly stopped desiring; but human wants are insatiable and we are always striving for more. So engrained in our own experience is this fact that it seems pointless to try and prove it – an abundance of goods, all else being equal, is a cause for celebration rather than for alarm.

If we dig deeper what is really meant when there is a “general glut” is that the costs of producing goods cannot be recouped by their selling revenue, in other words that all goods are experiencing losses. But this is nonsensical because the very existence of a cost means that there is an alternative use for the capital goods that produced the final good – if a loss is experienced then it means that some other good was more highly valued than the good that was in fact produced. It is therefore impossible for there to be a general glut of all goods as the very reason for the glut – the existence of costs – presupposes that there is a demand for some other good. But if capital was misdirected and should have been used to produce another good then it follows that there is not a glut of this latter good at all but a relative shortage.

Let us take a hypothetical economy where all the only goods are fruit. Let’s say that there are twenty apples, twenty oranges, twenty bananas and twenty pears. Let us also say that it takes the use of one unit of a piece of fruit to produce a single unit of another piece of fruit and so that, in equilibrium, the exchange ratio of the different fruits will be as follows:

20 apples:20 oranges:20 bananas:20 pears

I.e., that there is a final exchange ratio of 1:1:1:1. When one fruit trades for a single fruit, there are no profits and no losses. If the apple producer, for example, trades ten of his apples for ten oranges, he can use them in production for ten more apples – in short, the cost of ten apples has yielded a revenue of ten apples. The same is true of the orange producer – he has bought ten apples with oranges which he used to produce ten more oranges, a cost of ten oranges netted against a revenue of ten oranges. Total profit and loss is zero and the economy is in a state of equilibrium.

What happens if the above numbers are multiplied – i.e. if there are forty, sixty, one hundred, one thousand or one million of each fruit? Does it make any difference? Not at all as one fruit will still trade for one other fruit which can be used to produce another piece of fruit. No fruit will be able to sell at a loss (or at a profit) and nothing will remain unsold. More of each fruit in the same ratio simply indicates a more prosperous economy than one where there are fewer pieces of each fruit.

What about, however, where the ratio of fruits is altered? Let’s say that, instead of there being twenty of each fruit there are, in fact, 10 apples, 10 oranges, 30 bananas and 30 pears. It still takes one of each fruit to produce one other fruit (i.e. the demand curve has not shifted). So what has happened to our exchange rate? It will be as follows:

10 apples:10 oranges:30 bananas:30 pears

In other words, 1:1:3:3. So now, one apple will still trade for one orange, but for three bananas or three pears. But as the production of one piece of fruit still requires only one piece of another fruit there will now be relative profits and relative losses. The apple producer, for example, can now use one apple to buy three bananas with which he will make three apples – a cost of one apple versus a revenue of three apples. The same is true of the orange producer. The poor banana producer, however, suffers. He has to spend three bananas to purchase one apple with which he can only produce one banana – a cost of three bananas versus a revenue of one banana. The same is true of the pear producer. We therefore have an instance of there being two fruits – bananas and pears – that are unable to sell for enough in order to cover their costs. But this is not a general glut, for we also have two fruits whose revenue more than covers their costs. Resources will flow out of banana and pear production and into apple and orange production, increasing the number of apples and oranges while decreasing the number of bananas and pears. The result of this is that the purchasing power of apples and oranges will fall again and that of bananas and pears will rise again, reducing the profitability of the first two industries and the losses of the latter two. This will continue until an equilibrium is restored with an exchange ratio of 1:1:1:1 and no industry is either profitable or loss making.

The result then is that there can never be a general glut of all goods, but rather specific gluts of particular goods that were not preferred mirrored by specific shortages of other goods. And as we know from our analysis of Say’s Law above these costs are ultimately expressed in terms of other goods relative to each other, i.e. the exchange ratio will widen as their values diverge.

How does this happen on the real market? Obviously gluts and shortages don’t just appear as they did in our example above; but rather, they result from the ever-shifting demand curves of consumers which have to be foreseen by entrepreneurs. For example, if entrepreneurs invest heavily in apples when in fact the public wants oranges, the capital that would have produced oranges is diverted to apples. The resulting glut of apples and relative shortage of oranges may mean that it takes five, ten or twenty apples in order to demand a single orange. If this low selling price for apples is insufficient to pay the costs of production while the high selling price for oranges results in a bumper profit for the foresighted entrepreneurs who stuck to producing oranges, then it follows that resources will flow out of apple production and into orange production until an equilibrium is restored where both apples and oranges will exchange at a ratio where they are both able to cover their costs of production.

However, as the valuations of consumers are always changing the hypothetical state of equilibrium will never be reached and there will always be relative gluts of some goods that have been overproduced and relative shortages of goods that have been under-produced.

Nothing about any of this is a cause for alarm – it is the task of entrepreneurs to adjust the structure of production to the tastes of consumers and in the normal run of the mill, so to speak, nothing about this will cause any great or dire need for concern. What we shall see, however, is when there is monetary intervention in the forms of inflation and credit expansion, very wide dislocations between the goods that are demanded and those are supplied occur, leading to extreme gluts and shortages. The analysis of these instances is no different from simple dislocations, but what will be revealed is that any attempt to “boost demand” merely ends up perpetuating the production structure that is failing to meet the ends of consumers in the favour of those producers who are selling loss-making goods.

Simple Inflation

At any one snapshot of time there is a fixed stock goods in the economy. Let us return to our hypothetical fruit economy with the same stock of goods and the same exchange ratios so that

20 apples will buy 20 oranges, or 20 bananas, or 20 pears.

In other words there is once again exchange ratio of 1:1:1:1. In the economy where money has to be earned, no one can spend without first producing real goods. So if a melon producer now produces sixteen melons and (once again, assume that one melon exchanges for one piece of any other fruit) and decides to purchase with them sixteen apples, the stock of goods in the economy will now be four apples, sixteen melons, twenty oranges, twenty pears and twenty bananas. The exchange ratios will be thus:

4 apples:16 melons:20 oranges:20 bananas:20 pears

While apples have now become more expensive relative to any other fruit (a whole five oranges, for example, is now needed to purchase one apple whereas before only one was needed), melons have become cheaper relative to any other good. Overall, therefore, what has been lost in apples has been gained in melons.

The additional purchasing power of apples caused by the demand of the melon producer spurs the apple producer into producing more. What can he do? As he has sixteen real melons he can use these in the production of sixteen more apples, thus restoring the total stock of goods to twenty apples, twenty oranges, twenty bananas and twenty pears. There has therefore been a productive exchange on the market. What was demanded by the melon producer in apples was supplied by him in melons, permitting the apple producer to fund his subsequent production of more apples. Crucially, however, as the purchasing power of other fruits was not diminished the profitability of these industries did not decline and they could carry on as before.

The fact that all of the exchanges take place in the real economy through the medium of money is of no consequence to this analysis. For in reality, the melon producer would have sold his melons to a third party, X, for money and then used the money to purchase the apples. X might have used the melons to produce pomegranates and then the apple producer uses his money received from the melon producer to buy pomegranates, the latter being used by him to produce more apples. The important point is that goods are trading for other goods and that the production of new goods must be funded by other goods.

What happens, then, when new money is printed? Is it possible for economic prosperity to be delivered by the printing and spending of new money? Let us return to our original array of goods – twenty apples, twenty oranges, twenty bananas and twenty pears. If the Government prints more money it has to spend it on these existinggoods. Let’s say that, with the new money, it decides to buy sixteen apples. Does this new money in the pockets of apple producers entice it to spend more, which in turn causes their suppliers to spend more and so on until we reach ever dizzying heights of prosperity? No. For the problem is that no new real good has been supplied by the Government in return for its purchase and consumption of apples. Whereas the melon producer compensated for his consumption of apples by producing melons, all that has happened when the Government has printed more money to spend on apples is that the total of stock of all goods has declined by sixteen apples. As the stock of apples has declined relative to other goods the purchasing power of apples has risen accordingly. Instead of twenty fruits now trading for twenty others we now have:

4 apples:20 oranges:20 bananas:20 pears

What is the result of this? As the purchasing power of apples has now risen it means that this industry has become extremely profitable – with a single apple can be purchased five of any other fruit which can be used in production of five more apples, i.e. a cost of one fruit producing a revenue of five. All of the other industries, however, have now suffered relatively rising costs and lower revenues as they will each have to spend five fruits to gain one apple which will in turn produce only one of their particular fruit. What happens, once again, therefore is that resources will shift out of the orange, banana and pear industries and into the apple industry, reducing the relative surplus of the first three fruits and relieving the relative scarcity of apples. This process will stop when none of the industries can make either a profit or a loss, i.e. when one fruit again exchanges for one fruit. The shortest way for this to occur is for the apple producer to purchase four oranges, four bananas and four pears and to use them in the production of a total of twelve apples. The resulting array of goods will now be as follows:

16 apples:16 oranges:16 bananas:16 pears

What therefore is the result of the inflation? It is simply a reduction of the total number of goods available in the economy. Whereas before there were twenty pieces of each fruit now there are only sixteen. The Government, in failing to compensate for its consumption of apples with a supply of real goods in return, has simply reduced the total stock of goods by sixteen fruits. The earliest receivers of the new money, therefore, have received a benefit – the Government by being able to buy apples it hasn’t paid for in other goods and the apple producer by being the favoured receiver of the Government’s new money is ensured continuous profitability as its selling prices rise before its buying prices do. For everyone else, however, who receives the new money later, buying prices have risen faster than selling prices. They experience losses and a relative degree of impoverishment. Finally when the effects of inflation have worked themselves through the economy the result is a net loss for the economy as a whole.

This would be the effect of a one-shot inflation – the structure of production being left relatively intact but at a lower level. Things are much worse, however, when the inflation is continuous. For now, the Government keeps on buying apples with its newly printed money and not refunding this consumption with any real goods. What will happen, therefore, is that apples will be in continuous short supply relative to other goods and resources will continuously shift out of the production of other fruits and into apple production. The fruits furthest away in the supply chain from apples will suffer the most and eventually go out of business as their fruits remain permanently in high supply relative to the artificially created shortage of apples. There will be a permanent change in the structure of production in favour of the Government and its preferred suppliers at the expense of everybody else, resulting in an overall loss and reduction of total goods.

The Business Cycle

Whereas in our example of simple inflation the dislocation to the structure of production took place between different consumer goods, when it comes to the business cycle the disharmony caused is that between the demand of two classes of goods – consumer goods and capital (producer) goods. The artificial credit expansion fuelled by monetary inflation deludes entrepreneurs into thinking that more resources should be channelled into producing capital goods and fewer resources should be devoted to producing consumer goods, against the real wishes of consumers. Resources flow out of consumer goods and into capital goods. The end of the monetary inflation reveals the illusion – consumers did not have a rate of time preference and consequent rate of saving that makes the investment in capital goods profitable. The resources devoted to the production of capital goods should have been directed towards the production of consumer goods. There is, therefore, a specific glut of capital goods and a specific shortage of consumer goods. From Say’s law what this means is that consumer goods will command a high selling price in terms of capital goods and capital goods will command a low selling price in terms of consumer goods. Resources need to flow out of capital good production and into consumer good production until an equilibrium is restored where both are meeting their costs.

Indeed, economic crises are always crises of capital and not of consumer goods. This fact is often masked by the nominal price inflation of the boom accompanied and the subsequent deflation of the bust as the supply expands and contracts respectively. During the boom it is true that all prices, those of capital and consumer goods, rise and so there is a tendency to think that there is an all round prosperity. But what is really happening is that the prices of capital goods rise faster than those of consumer goods, so that there is a shift in the real price relationship (expressed in terms of goods) between consumer goods and capital goods. Once the bust happens, there is a corresponding deflation of all prices leading to the apparent view that the entire economy is suffering. But the reality is that the prices of capital goods decline faster than those of consumer goods so that, in real terms, the prices of consumer goods rise and those of capital goods fall as resources move out of the latter and into the former.

Indeed it is ironic that under-consumptionists view the alleged “problem” of the bust as a lack of consumption causing economic stagnation. For the reality is that there is no problem with consumption at all and it is in fact the desire for consumption that has been frustrated during the boom. If anything there needs to be less consumption and more saving so that the relative shift of goods out of the capital goods industry is less severe and at least some of the projects that were embarked upon in the boom may have a chance of achieving profitability (hence Government deficit spending – rampant consumption – only makes the bust even more painful). But unless that is desired by consumers it is futile to go on inflating and pumping in more credit as the structure of production that is so out of kilter with the desires of consumers is simply perpetuated as a lifeless zombie.

The Demand for Money

Up until now we have been considering cases where the relative gluts and shortages in the economy are between real goods with money serving only as an intermediary between goods. However money, or more accurately, the desire to hold money is itself a good that serves an end in its own right. Money is the most marketable of all goods and holding it provides a degree of reassurance that holding other goods does not. The desire to hold a larger cash balance, all else being equal, therefore reveals a degree of uncertainty on the part of its owner, an uncertainty that is hedged by the ability to quickly use cash to exchange for whatever goods and services are needed in the period of uncertainty. Holding money therefore in and of itself providers a satisfaction in much the same way as a real good does. So what happens, then, when the relative gluts and shortages involve not surpluses of goods against shortages of other goods, but surpluses of goods against shortages of money? In other words, when the demand to hold cash rises? Surely now our under-consumptionists can hold validly that everything will remain unsold as everyone scrambles to soak up more cash and the whole economy will collapse into a depressing slump?

The simple, and orthodox, “Austrian” answer to this apparent problem is that if the demand for cash suddenly rises then everyone must sell goods. The sudden influx of goods onto the market increases their supply resulting in a reduced price of each good in terms of money. But in terms of the ratio of goods to goods there needn’t be any change at all. For example, if the following exchange ratios existed before the demand for cash rises:

1 apple sells for 20p

20p buys 1 orange

The ratio of the apple to the orange is 1:1. But if the demand for cash suddenly rises such that the money prices of all goods declines then the following exchange ratio may result:

1 apple sells for 10p

10p buys 1 orange

Whereas the exchange ratio between goods and money is now lower, the exchange ratio between goods is the same. Exactly the same real trade in terms will therefore take place, just at lower money prices.

Indeed it is for this reason that deflation is not a problem for the running of business. For what matters for businesses is neither rising nor falling prices but the differential between their revenues and their costs. If both their revenues and their costs are falling then it is still possible to make a profit and to expand business. Indeed, the period between the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the eve of the New Deal era was generally one of a long, secular deflation and this was the most productive period in the whole of human history.

However the story is not so straightforward for it is in fact true that a greater demand to hold cash changes the structure of production but not its level. As we noted earlier, cash is it self a good and the demand to hold cash is itself an act of consumption. An increase in the demand for it is, therefore, an increase in consumption and results in a higher societal time preference and a rise in interest rates. Indeed this makes intuitive sense. If the holding of a cash balance is a hedge against uncertainty, a higher degree of security will be accompanied by a willingness to engage in more roundabout methods of production and to exchange present money for assets that promise to pay a greater amount of money in what is, relatively, a certain future. If that certainty disappears, however, people begin to prefer liquidity today rather than liquidity tomorrow, curtailing their investment in future goods and selling them for cash now. Societal time preference and, therefore, the rate of interest rises. The selling price of the monetary commodity – e.g. gold or silver – will rise while its costs of production will fall, so that resources will shift into the gold or silver mining industry in order meet the new demand for money. There is therefore no reduction in production, merely a shifting of production out of lengthier, roundabout production processes and into the production of a) the monetary commodity, and b) lower order producer goods and consumer goods that can quickly be bought with the hoarded money when adverse conditions arise2.

Societal Profits and Societal Losses

The foregoing analysis gives the impression that a profit that appears somewhere in the economy (i.e. a relative scarcity) must be offset by a loss somewhere else in the economy (i.e. a relative glut). Is it true, therefore, that societal profits are always mirrored by societal losses?

Accounting profits are an excess of revenue over cost – that a firm has paid out less money that what it has received. Losses are the opposite, a firm paying out more money than what it receives in revenue. If all cash income was added to a firm’s profits and all cash expenditure added to its losses then it would be true that societal profits would equal societal losses as no firm could receive more in revenue than it paid out in expenditure without somebody, somewhere, paying out more in expenditure than they received in revenue in order to fund this difference. Indeed, the social function of all entrepreneurs is to arrange the structure of production in a way so that it best meets the needs of consumers. The decisions they make have to be made in advance, resulting in an appraisal of what it is that consumers will value tomorrow. They subsequently set about incurring costs by purchasing factors of production that they arrange into a production structure that they think will best meet the needs of consumers. If all of the entrepreneurs managed to arrange, on day one, the production structure exactly as consumers wanted it on day two, come that latter day revenue would exactly equal cost. The entrepreneurs would have utilised just the correct quantity of factors and have produced just the right quantity of specific goods that consumers were willing to pay for. No one entrepreneur would have bought too many producer goods and deprived an alternative end of their use, nor would any entrepreneur have bought too few producer goods and permitted too much of their use to alternative ends3. In reality, however, this state of apparent perfection is never reached and the resulting structure of production is never completely in tune with the valuations of consumers. Every structure of production is begat by a forecast, a prediction, or empathetic understanding of the businessman for his clients. It therefore never quite hits the mark and some goods will be relatively over-produced while others will be relatively under-produced. If a firm overproduces then the revenue it received was insufficient to pay for the factors of production, in other words that there were competing ends that were bidding up the prices of these factors and that the firm starved these ends of their means of production. A loss cannot materialise therefore without a corresponding underproduction elsewhere, meaning that revenue for these latter goods was more than sufficient to pay for the factors of production, in other words that these entrepreneurs did not bid up the factors enough to starve the loss-making ends of superfluous production.

So is it true, then, that every successful, profitable businessman is riding high on the losses of someone else? That for every entrepreneur arriving to work in a chauffeur-driven limousine another has been relegated to taking the bus?

Not at all, for it is entirely possible for societal-wide profits (and societal-wide losses) to emerge. This is owing to the capitalisation of durable producer goods. As a durable good is expected to produce revenue-generating consumer goods not immediately but also into the future, the capitalisation of a producer good is the market value of that asset’s future revenue, discounted to allow for the fact that these revenues are future revenues and not present revenues. At the point of purchase, therefore, the good is not recognised as an expense of the purchaser but as an asset (and correspondingly the cash that paid for it will show up on the asset side of the balance sheet of the vendor). No cost at all is shown in the accounts of anybody. Rather, the cost of the good is recognised incrementally over its lifetime as it depreciates, i.e. its use in furnishing consumer goods renders lower its ability to produce goods in the future. Entrepreneurs therefore face a choice – to increase present production and increase present sales revenue but at the same time incur the cost of heavier depreciation charges; or to reduce production and preserve the capital value of the asset but reducing sales revenue. Once again, the entrepreneur has to appraise how many goods to produce today and how many to leave for production tomorrow. If the revenue received from expanding production is exactly equal to the depreciation charge of the capital good (plus other costs) it means that he has exactly produced the favoured amount of present goods at the expense of future goods. The market was willing to pay in present goods precisely what it lost in future goods. What, though, if there is a profit? This means that the revenue received is greater than the cost of depreciation, in other words, the entrepreneur withheld from production more present goods than the market was willing to pay for. Future production will therefore be higher but at the expense of present production. And correspondingly, if there is a loss it means that revenue was insufficient to pay for the cost of depreciation – the entrepreneur produced too many goods in the present when they were more valuable in the future.

Societal-wide profits and losses therefore emerge when collectively entrepreneurs under and overproduce, respectively, present goods. Profits represent entrepreneurial saving – the deferment of present production for future production – whereas losses represent entrepreneurial dis-saving – the ravaging of future production for the sake of present production. And as we know it is saving that is the hallmark of capital accumulation, the increase in production and ultimately a higher standard of living. Dis-saving, however, results in capital consumption, a decrease in future production and ultimately a lower standard of living4.

Does this mean, then, that “vicious” entrepreneurs can simply withhold from present production increasing numbers of goods, driving the profit rate higher and higher and spreading widespread misery? No, for in the first place this ignores the non-capitalised factors of production. If an entrepreneur reduces production in order to drive up profits then he also has to reduce his demand for these latter factors – including non-durable producer goods but especially labour. The cost of these factors will therefore decrease, leading to competitors to employ them, restore full production and reduce the market share of the abstaining entrepreneur. The same would also be true of a cartel. If entrepreneurs in concert decided to restrict production, swathes of non-capitalised factors would become available and eventually the cartel would break when one of the entrepreneurs takes advantage of the opportunity this affords. But the main effect of societal profits is that they afford the ability to expand production. For if depreciation charges are lower than revenue then it means that comparatively less has to be spent on maintaining the existing stock of capital. Entrepreneurs can therefore do one of two things – either expand the existing capital stock, in which case production of the same consumer goods will be increased, thus lowering their price and capturing market share from competitors; or they can invest in more roundabout production processes that will afford the ability to provide more newly introduced consumer goods that have never appeared before. A variant on the second option is that, as entrepreneurial saving represents a fall in societal time preference rates, the interest rate will also fall and new entrepreneurs whose projects were too costly before will now offer to borrow the saved funds and invest them in their more roundabout processes of production. Hence you get the famous “Hayekian triangle” – a production structure that becomes longer and thinner as resources are directed out of producing and maintaining the existing capital stock into producing new capital.

Indeed entrepreneurial profit is simply the corollary of private saving. In both cases an excess of revenue over cost means that consumption is denied to the present in favour of the future, these funds being diverted to new, higher stages of production that result in a greater outlay of consumer goods. The greater the profit margin in the lower stages then the greater this effect will be.

Obviously the opposite happens when profits are reduced – more has to be devoted to maintaining the existing capital structure with comparatively less being used on expansion. If losses are experienced then capital is actively being consumed as there are no funds at all left over to replace the existing stock once it is fully depreciated. Production therefore declines along with the standard of living.

Conclusion

It is clear then that under-consumptionist theories are nothing but a tissue of falsehoods. In summary:

Goods ultimately trade for other goods and the production of one good requires the use of other, real goods;

General gluts cannot arise on the market; only specific gluts and specific shortages which will become apparent through the price system and ultimately through the exchange ratio between goods;

It is the task of entrepreneurs to ensure that these gluts and shortages do not arise, the pricing, profit and loss system regimenting them in the fulfilment of this important function;

The business cycle is a specific glut of capital goods and a specific shortage of consumer goods on a wide scale; that the pricing, profit and loss system has been distorted by credit expansion leading entrepreneurs to believe that the economy can support a larger capital structure than it really can;

Increased demand for money does not have any effect on the level of production and is no cause for alarm; it may affect the specific structure of production but this is wholly in line with the valuations of consumers.

Profits and losses do not offset each other – societal profits and societal losses are possible. Societal profits indicate a lowering of the societal rate of time preference, leading to capital accumulation and the expansion of production; losses indicate a raising of the societal time preference rate, leading to capital consumption and a decrease in production.

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1We are, of course, ignoring for the purpose of this illustration the issue of constancy. For more on this see Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp. 102-4.

2Whether an economy is operating with a fiat money or a commodity money is what makes the difference between whether an increased demand for cash will leave the time-structure of production unchanged (as in our first scenario laid out above where the exchange rate of goods remains equal) or whether the time-structure will be changed. See Jörg Guido Hülsmann, The Demand for Money and the Time-Structure of Production, Ch. 31 in Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Stephan Kinsella (eds.), Property, Freedom and Society, Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. See p. 322 for an explanation of how the shift in the time-structure of the economy that occurs under commodity money (but does not under fiat money) better serves the needs of consumers than a production structure that is left as it was before. All we need to note here is that with either fiat or a commodity money the level of production does not change and that there is consequently no depression of business brought about by under-spending or under-consumption.

3This is the hypothetical “equilibrium” state that seems to be the shibboleth of mainstream economists.

4It is, therefore, supremely ironic, let alone wildly inaccurate, that opponents of the free-market charge profit-seeking with the depletion and destruction of the Earth and its natural resources. This fallacy stems from always focusing on the fact that entrepreneurs want to maximise revenue while completely ignoring the fact that they also have to minimise costs. Profit indicates a saving of resources, not their depletion – the entrepreneur has advanced fewer goods than the market was willing to pay for. By incurring costs lower than revenue he has saved resources, not decimated them. It is precisely those assets over which full private property rights (and hence, their capitalised value) are available to the capitalist-entrepreneur that are not in short supply or at any risk of being depleted. For the ever present urge to reduce costs means that they cannot be depreciated more quickly than the market is willing to pay for, otherwise losses will be incurred. Those resources over which there are no private property rights, however – in particular forests, fish stocks, “endangered” animals – are precisely the ones where we experience a depletion. With no one able to enjoy the capital value of these assets and to incur the cost of their depletion against their revenue there is no reason to avoid their decimation.